07 Nov '24

LLM Parlour Games for Overeducated Wankers

teaching ai

Note: this stuff is the workshop content for an alumni workshop in November 2024 at the ANU School of Cybernetics.

Abstract

In this interactive design session participants will design and prototype their own language-model-based parlour game. We’ll think critically about what language models are (and aren’t) and what they’re good for (and rubbish at). You’ll interact with other humans and design systems with goals and guardrails, and think about what it means to give input to (and understand output from) LLMs and genAI systems.

Prerequisites: ability to lounge around and use big words to impress your friends in games of no stakes whatsoever. Self-satisfied smugness about said loquaciousness is helpful but not essential.

Tech note

This workshop requires access to a chat-based LLM (e.g. ChatGPT). If you’ve got a laptop (or even a phone, although you’ll be typing on your janky little phone keyboard) you can head to https://chatgpt.com (no sign-up required). But if you’ve got a different favourite chat-based LLM, feel free to use that instead.

Outline

• intro
• play 20 questions
  • shareback
• adventures in amphibology
  • shareback
• design your own LLM parlour game
  • shareback

Thesis statement

the killer app for genAI is parlour games for overeducated wankers

(this is a demographic I know well, because I am one)

To break it down:

• parlour: involving co-located humans. Bored. Night outside, drinks and a warm fire inside… and so

• games: to entertain ourselves and each other

…for…

• overeducated: word games, word play, we are masters of language and we love to show off

• wankers: (literally) self-indulgent. Not about a bigger goal, or doing good in the world, it’s just for the heck of it.

Mechanics of a parlour game

10 someone says something
20 someone(s) says something in response
30 GOTO 20

As an example, consider the game of Twenty Questions.

Ben scrawls on the whiteboard for 5mins

Play: LLM-augmented 20 Questions

Here are the prompts (you can copy-paste them automatically with the widget at the top right of the text).

To start, let’s have the LLM be the “answerer” and you (and other human players) be the “questioner”, although you’ll need to have someone at a laptop be the LLM surrogate. Have them use this (or similar) prompt, and don’t show the output to the questioner(s).

You're playing Twenty Questions, so you need to choose an object and tell me
what it is (I won't tell the other players).

Then, the questioner(s) can ask the LLM questions (via the surrogate) like:

Is the object you're thinking of bigger than a car?

The surrogate continues to mediate between the LLM and the questioners until there’s a winner (either a questioner guesses correctly, or there have been 20 questions).

Shareback

• what’s the funnest/funniest moment, and why?
• what parts sucked?
• how did your play/strategy/behaivour change over time?
• did you tweak the game rules at all? if so, how?

Play: Adventures in Amphibology

Every player thinks of a word or (short) phrase, writes it down on a piece of paper and puts it in a hat.

These words/phrases are all fed into an LLM using the following prompt template:

You are an expert in the use of language, and you have been given the following words/phrases:

- <phrase one>
- <phrase two>
- <phrase three>
- etc.

Which of these words/phrases is the most ambiguous, and why?

The player who wrote the thing that the LLM chooses scores 1 point. But they’re not the winner just yet.

Using the same words/phrases (i.e. without starting a new ChatGPT session) ask the LLM to pick again, based on successively different criteria:

Which of these words/phrases best describes your perfect date?

Which of these words/phrases is the purplest?

Which of these words/phrases most evokes the experience of a crisp winter sunrise in Canberra?

Which of these words/phrases would be the best title for a sci-fi movie?

Which of these words/phrases is the most nihilistic?

Which of these words/phrases has the most assonance?

Which of these words/phrases is the most disrespectful?

Which of these words/phrases would be the best name for a pet cat?

Which of these words/phrases sounds most like a boy band track from the 90s?

Which of these words/phrases would be the easiest to explain to a toddler?

Which of these words/phrases would be the best password for a secret underground antifascist network?

At the end, the player with the most points wins. You can play as many times as you like, with new words/phrases and/or new “judging” criteria.

Shareback

• what’s the funnest/funniest moment, and why?
• what parts sucked?
• how did your play/strategy/behaivour change over time?
• did you tweak the game rules at all? if so, how?

Play: design your own LLM parlour game

Write/draw it up in such a way that a different group (in this workshop) could play it without you being there to help them out.

Shareback, and remember

There’s no higher purpose here. It’s all just parlour games for overeducated wankers.